Bias: A giant TV network has effectively admitted to blackmailing Florida's GOP Sen. Marco Rubio over his immigration stance. It's Exhibit A of the kind of sludge being hurled at Latino leaders who won't toe the open-borders line.

Bigfoot Spanish-language television network Univision unwittingly revealed it's got a mafia-style hit-equivalent out there waiting for any conservative leader of Hispanic descent who won't tout their open-borders line on immigration.

So much for reporting the news. Univision's top honchos behind this are all about politics — and are running their news organization like a cult mafia leader wielding power based on groupthink and fear.

Last October, the Miami Herald broke news that Univision executive Isaac Lee threatened to make public a story about the arrest of Rubio's brother-in-law 24 years ago — that is, unless, in an offer he couldn't refuse, Rubio agreed to go on Univision's Jorge Ramos show, presumably to be savaged by the TV host, known as a loud advocate of open borders.

Univision denied the Herald story, though the paper had multiple witnesses — but then spilled the beans to the New Yorker, admitting to writer Ken Auletta that it had indeed offered the popular Florida senator "three Univision options" to soften or spike their nasty "investigation" if Rubio did the Ramos show.

Univision figured it could demolish Rubio politically with the offer, which is why it pulled out all stops and violated all standards of journalistic ethics.

But things didn't go as planned: Rubio refused to be blackmailed and told them no.

Univision then ran the scurrilous piece attempting to link Rubio to drugs, which was so baseless even the mainstream media wouldn't pick it up.

The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo reported a whole string of disgraceful pressure tactics Univision pulled to put the heat on Rubio. Those ranged from adding the words #rubio and #drugs to advertise their show on their Twitter feed and create a false link, to sending a huge TV truck to the doorstep of Rubio's sister, to attract embarrassing attention.

Caputo reported that the Univision shakedown also included trying to get Florida Gov. Rick Scott to call for Rubio's resignation. Caputo said the ploy appalled Univision's reputable journalists, who called him up to describe the egregious violation of ethics.

What does this say about Univision and its line?

That there's a creepy network determined to stamp out any dissent in the Hispanic community and force all leaders to toe a party line — or else face media ruin.

Univision Chairman Haim Saban made that clear in an email to the Herald, declaring Rubio "anti-Hispanic" because of his views on immigration, as if Saban has some edge over Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, when it comes to being Hispanic.

Here are the facts: Rubio is popular among Hispanics and represents a massive threat to the Democrats' grip on the pivotal Hispanic vote, which may be up for grabs, given the Obama administration's economic failures.

Saban is a big-time billionaire bankroller of the Democratic Party and seems willing to turn his TV network into a Democrat mouthpiece.

This is no small matter. Saban's network — which says it reaches 75% of Latino households and frequently tops the Big Three networks in viewership — seems to think it has a monopoly on the news and that it can make or break any Hispanic leader. Heck, it seems to think it can even arbitrate who's Hispanic.

Univision's Isaac Lee, who made the "options" offer, had the nerve to gleefully retweet a report that Latinos respect Univision more than the Catholic Church or military — a power politics statement if there ever was one, given he did it the day Auletta's piece came out.

In doing this, Univision is sadly showing that it isn't about news, but rather about raw politics. And because it's corrupting the news, its monopoly won't likely last.

Indeed, that Rubio remains popular despite the attacks suggests that Latinos are no longer a group that can be dictated to by Univision.

And Rubio's brave refusal to be blackmailed over his immigration views is as much a threat to Univision as it is to the Democrats.

The Monday Boston Globe featured a photo on the front page of its Metro section of a lip-locked couple who “found romance” at Occupy Boston.

“Holding hands outside the food tent before the encampment disbanded,” read the accompanying story, “they were the archetype of an Occupy couple: he, a red-headed Mainer with tattoos on his arms; she, a petite upstate New York girl with a heart-shaped face and a boyish haircut, wearing a knit grandmother sweater three sizes too big.”

Good details — but the story failed to mention one big one: Robert “Red” Stitham, the 25 year-old beau whose relationship with Anya Karasik, 18, is the focus of the piece, is a Level 3 sex offender.

A quick Google search of his name turns up his sex offender notification — complete with his photo — on the website of the police department in Plymouth, where Stitham grew up.

·

· A search on the state Sex Offender Registry Board website shows Stitham now lives in a homeless shelter in Boston.

In 2007, a Barnstable County jury convicted Stitham of two counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, and he was sentenced to 18 months with time served, court records state.

Sally Kohn, a former senior strategist at the Soros-funded Center for Community Change, has been hired as a Fox News Contributor. Soros is the controversial hedge fund billionaire, convicted of insider trading in France, who finances the “progressive” movement in the U.S. It is significant that Kohn is now a regular paid commentator on Fox News, while Glenn Beck, the one-time archenemy of George Soros, was ousted from the channel last year and now hosts an Internet TV show.

An open lesbian who shuns feminine attire and frequently wears a suit jacket, Kohn is joining Fox News after being a regular on such programs as “The Ed Show” on liberal rival MSNBC. She is now officially part of the “Fox News Family,” as she puts it, and has been making appearances on the channel for several days.

The selection of Kohn raises disturbing questions about the direction of Fox News in a critical election year. Kohn worked at the Center for Community Change, one of the leading Soros-funded groups, for six years, from 2004—2010. During this period, the group received $5.8 million from Soros’s main vehicle, the Open Society Institute (OSI).

The former chair of the board of the Center for Community Change, Cecilia Munoz, was recently named the Director of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House, a position that makes her one of Obama’s top aides. She had been serving as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. A White House press release about her appointment notes that she previously served on the U.S. Programs Board of the OSI and was Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza.

Kohn has a history of her own, having worked for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a group that tries to keep criticism of the homosexual agenda out of the mainstream media. Interestingly, GLAAD has relentlessly attacked Fox News, with one of the latest examples being an occasion during which correspondent Shannon Bream interviewed guests critical of a transgendered person, a man dressed as a woman, who had used a woman’s changing room at a department store. GLAAD viewed this criticism as “dangerous.”

GLAAD attacked CNN for including an ex-gay activist on the air, saying his views were harmful to their interests.

Not only is Kohn’s hiring by Fox News a victory for GLAAD, where she worked for two years, but the Soros-funded and gay-run Media Matters organization is extremely happy with the selection.

“Fox News Hires Gay Rights Activist Sally Kohn As Contributor” declared “Equality Matters,” a division of Media Matters. “Aside from her history of progressive activism, Kohn has also been an outspoken proponent of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] equality,” it said. Still, Media Matters wonders if Kohn is going to be aggressive enough on the air.

Soros had given Media Matters $1 million for a campaign to neutralize the conservative message of Fox News. “Media Matters is one of the few groups that attempts to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast,” said Soros. “I am supporting Media Matters in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

In response, Fox News fired Beck, even while calling it a mutual decision and promising collaboration on “a slate of projects for Fox News Channel and Fox News’ digital properties” that have yet to materialize.

Kohn herself narrated a video making fun of Beck, insisting that he was spouting misinformation about fascism and communism being extreme left-wing ideas and implying that he was the real fascist. She said that liberals like President Obama and herself favor “democratic capitalism,” not any kind of state control of the economy.

The reality, however, is quite different.

“Sally Kohn makes the world safe for radical ideas,” her website says. In fact, Kohn is a far-left radical who attended the 2003 World Social Forum in Brazil, a meeting place for groups which say they are opposed to capitalism and U.S. imperialism. The 2011-2012 “ Calendar of Struggles” for the World Social Forum includes:

Global week of actions in support to the freedom of the Gaza Flotilla II.

International Conference on the impact of the North American invasion in Iraq.

International Solidarity Day for the Palestinian and African peoples.

Not only is Kohn now on Fox News, where she can demonstrate the channel’s “fair and balanced” commitment by championing radical Arab and pro-Marxist causes, she is being given open access to the influential FoxNews.com website, where she writes articles praising the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Kohn bio at the end of her Fox News columns says she is the founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, “a grassroots think tank,” but clicking on the organization’s website takes you to Kohn’s personal page. It appears that the Movement Vision Lab was a project of the Center for Community Change that has since been discontinued.

One particular aspect of Kohn’s gay rights career—working at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force—has caught the attention of Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, a group that monitors the advance of the homosexual agenda. He said the Task Force is one of the most radical homosexual organizations on the scene today and works openly with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a group dedicated to advancing what are called the “BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities.” The latter are references to so-called “kinky” sexual practices widely considered dangerous and/or immoral.

Kohn’s three-year stint at the Task Force included “organizing campaigns and research projects for gay rights, earning the ability to call myself a ‘professional gay’ for the rest of my life,” she says.

Kohn has a three-year old daughter, Willa Hansen-Kohn, with her “partner,” Sarah Hansen, a community organizer with involvement in such groups as the Soros-funded Tides Center.

The relationship is newsworthy because Kohn reportedly met Hansen at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2003. The World Social Forum is a gathering of groups “opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.”

Kohn also regularly attends the U.S. Social Forum, the American affiliate of the World Social Forum, which has assembled in the past under the banner of “Another U.S. Is Necessary!”

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America, a group opposing “global capitalism.”

The Ruckus Society, an anarchist group.

United for Peace & Justice, a group opposed to American military intervention abroad.

Both Kohn and Rashad Robinson, executive director of a group called Color of Change, have attended the Soros-funded event known as the “ Creative Change Retreat,” described as a place where “arts and social justice” come together.

Color of Change was co-founded by Van Jones, the former Obama official who lost his job after Beck, then on Fox News, highlighted his radical communist connections by drawing on material from anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon and others.

Jones had the last laugh, noting during an appearance at the Campaign for America’s Future conference that Beck had lost his job at Fox.

Soros’s Open Society Institute had provided $300,000 to Color of Change and its parent entity called the Citizen Engagement Laboratory. Executive director Robinson had previously worked as Senior Director of Media Programs for GLAAD, where he apparently learned the techniques of protesting the presence of conservative voices in the media.

It was in response to Beck’s attacks on Soros and Obama that Color of Change organized an advertiser boycott of Beck’s show, while other Soros-funded organizations such as the Jewish Funds for Justice and Media Matters accused Beck of anti-Semitism for criticizing Soros.

Despite the phony nature of the charge against Beck—Soros is an atheist with no love for Israel—Fox News buckled under the pressure. “Beck’s lack of advertisers made him a financial liability for Fox, and it’s clear that this was a driving factor in his departure from Fox,” Robinson said. “This is an incredible and unprecedented victory.”

But Beck was not and is not the only target. Color of Change has also demanded that Eric Bolling, now a regular on “The Five” Fox News program that replaced Beck’s show, be fired for “race-baiting and fear-mongering.”

Bill O’Reilly, host of “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, has been a target as well. But Kohn’s former employer GLAAD has been his nemesis. O’Reilly is now featuring Kohn as a liberal guest on his show, apparently hoping to stave off the criticism of his program.

The New York Times cites the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a credible source, while continuing its policy of never mentioning that CAIR was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, and operates as a Hamas support group.

NYT also suppressed the facts that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator 2007 Holy Land Foundation conspiracy trial, which resulted in the FBI cutting off all formal contact with the group and that an FBI official has described CAIR as a "front for Hamas."

NYT primarily relies on two sources for comments: Zead Ramadan of CAIR-NY, and Faiza Patel, of the Brennan Center of Justice, but which the Times deliberately fails to mention that both of whom represent organizations that have repeatedly refused to condemn Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups or have blamed the FBI for fabricating Islamic terror plots.

An IPT investigator videotaped Ramadan at a press event refusing to answer her questions as to whether Hamas is a terrorist organization.

The Times cites CAIR's Zead Ramadan as a legitimate source of criticism of the film but fails to report that Ramadan contributed $1,000 to Viva Palestina, an organization led by noted anti-Semite George Galloway, that supports Hamas financially and politically, in 2010.Patel of the Brennan Center has long been a critic of law enforcement's attempts to counter terrorism, even denouncing the NYPD's operation that resulted in the arrest of accused lone-wolf jihadist Jose Pimentel, charged with plotting to bomb U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Times failed to report that their only two sources for their story--CAIR and the Brennan Center, who are made to seem independent and impartial are actual apologists for Islamic terrorist groups. In fact, the Times failed to report that the Brennan Center received CAIR's "Safe While Free" Award in 2009.

The Times failed to report one actual flaw in the film but based its demonization of the film based largely on emails it did not disclose that it received from CAIR, a Hamas front group In a front-page story on Tuesday discussing the documentary film, "The Third Jihad," and its use by the NYPD in training, The New York Times once again collaborates with radical Islamists to help shape the news.

The article revealed the newspaper's bias, from the vaguely threatening headline – "In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims" - and by relying on those who are not simply opposed to the film, but have previously demonstrated their support of radical Islamists by both word and by association with similarly aligned groups.

The Times' article, written by Michael Powell, primarily relies on the opinions of Zead Ramadan of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' New York chapter (CAIR-NY) and Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center, both of whom aver that the NYPD acted questionably by showing city police the film, to present the case. Ramadan asserts that the movie "defiled our faith and misrepresented everything we stood for." Patel stated that, "The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us."

The problem with Ramadan and Patel, left unsaid by the newspaper, is found in their words and associations. As has been its longstanding policy, the Times never mentions that CAIR is a Hamas support group, created by the Muslim Brotherhood to present and promote its interests. (Of course, even if one day the Times did acknowledge that, it would still have to break another self-imposed taboo of having never once called Hamas a terrorist organization.)

In contrast to the newspaper, the film does reveal how CAIR was created shortly after a secret 1993 meeting in Philadelphia involving members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. The goal was for CAIR to operate as a pro-Hamas lobbying group, without being publicly linked to Hamas.

The FBI later cited that evidence, which was used to help name CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation conspiracy trial, in explaining why it cut off formal communication with CAIR. "Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS," FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers wrote in April 2009, "the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."

But CAIR refused to address the documentary's substance. Instead, the group issued a press release quoting Ramadan comparing it to the Nazi-era film "Triumph of the Will" and the silent movie "Birth of a Nation." Ramadan voiced his concerns to NYPD chief Raymond Kelly, who said he would "take care of it" and department spokesman Browne denounced the film as "wacky."

All of this was left out of the article on Tuesday, which also failed to inform readers about the questionable backgrounds of the movie's critics. The story said nothing about the fact that in 2010 Ramadan contributed $1,000 to Viva Palestina, an organization founded by the notorious anti-Semite George Galloway, and which supports Hamas financially and politically, or that CAIR-NY in 2008 issued a statement calling for the release of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to contribute funds to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist group.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism attended a Dec. 15, 2011 press conference held by a group calling itself the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, and asked if he considered Hamas a terrorist organization. Ramadan was asked point-blank: "Do you consider Hamas a terrorist organization?"

[click above to view the video or click here to see the video and a full transcript]

Ramadan proceeded to tap-dance around the question. He replied by stating that, "Islam, myself, and I think all people of conscience, are opposed to all terrorism in all of its forms against all people of the world. Anyone who is innocent that is killed, it's not the way of the Islamic people or people who stand for liberty and justice. Thank you very much."

Our investigator pressed forward, asking Ramadan about Hamas specifically. Ramadan refused to answer, stating that his concern was "the American Bill of Rights situation that we now have."

Ramadan then proceeded to attack the questioner. "You want to take our foreign policy issue and make it the number one issue in the world. No. The issue we have right here is the problem we have in America, and we're eroding," he said.

Ramadan added that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had gone to Myanmar to talk about the erosion of human rights and appeared to be "bringing that back here" and "showing how to erode our civil rights here."

Again, our investigator noted that Ramadan was evading the question about Hamas.

Over and over, CAIR spends a lot of effort urging Muslim Americans not to cooperate with law enforcement. Speaking at CAIR-NY's "Annual Banquet and Leadership Conference" in April 2011, board member Lamis Deek implored her audience not to speak to the FBI, NYPD or other law enforcement agencies.

"It's very important to not speak to law enforcement of any type, not just FBI agents," she said. "We're talking about the New York Police Department, we're talking about tax agents, we're talking about everybody."

Deek said that if the FBI shows up claiming it has a warrant for someone's arrest, they need to ask to see the warrant because "Mossad" agents had been "go[ing] around pretending to be FBI." She warned that "they" (it was unclear whether she was referring to the Mossad, the FBI, or both) will threaten to "seriously blackmail" people.

Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center - which is sufficiently in accord with CAIR that in 2009 it received CAIR's 'Safe While Free' Award - offers complementary positions. At a Nov. 17 forum in Washington entitled "Islamist Radicalization, Myth or Reality," Patel appeared to suggest that any effort by law enforcement to look for signs of radicalism in the Muslim community was doomed to failure. "You can't expect the community to behave as your partner if at the same time you're subjecting them to intense surveillance and monitoring," she said.

And if Muslims were in denial about the existence of radical Islamist ideologies in their communities, perhaps law enforcement should defer to them, Patel added: "If the community doesn't believe that radicalization or extremism or extremist views or extremist ideologies is (sic) a problem in their own community, then you should also understand that maybe they know what they're talking about, and not be spending police resources this way."

In a Huffington Post op-ed, Patel denounced the NYPD's operation that resulted in the arrest of accused lone-wolf jihadist Jose Pimentel, charged with plotting to bomb U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It should not come as a surprise that The New York Times left all of this critical information out of Tuesday's article, given the paper's long history of covering for CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations. As we have noted before, Times reporters like Andrea Elliott and columnists like Nicholas Kristof have published stories glossing over the radical background of Salafist cleric Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at the Houston-based AlMaghrib Institute, and whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood's radical record and hostility towards Israel.

Last December, after Kristof penned a column in which he claimed that Brotherhood officials in Egypt had been behaving responsibly, Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy described Kristof as "credulous" about the Brotherhood. After interviewing some of the organization's members who had just been elected to Parliament, Trager wrote in the New Republic that, "Far from being moderate, these future leaders share a commitment to theocratic rule, complete with a limited view of civil liberties and an unmistakable antipathy for the West."

Nonetheless, the NYPD, apparently responding to pressure from the media and perhaps from politicians, including Mayor Bloomberg, who denounced the film, stopped showing the documentary.

Somebody [at the NYPD] exercised some terrible judgment," Bloomberg said Tuesday. "As soon as they found out about it, they stopped it." The mayor gave no indication that he had actually seen the film.

Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and narrator of the film, took exception to Bloomberg's comments. "I could not disagree more," he said. "The fact that Bloomberg made such a comment without providing any evidence that the film was in error indicates that the mayor's comment was "careless," Jasser said.

Bloomberg's ignorance should not be surprising given his administration's friendly relationship with CAIR-NY. In May 2009, for example, the mayor's education policy advisor, Fatima Ashraf, hosted the Islamist group's annual banquet and fundraiser, where she gushed praise for CAIR-NY. Ashraf called it "a shining star among Muslim organizations in the country," adding that "their sincerity and motivation" and "genuine desire to make positive change for Muslims is what really makes them stand out."

In similar fashion, Bloomberg's uninformed position is mirrored by the Times article, which does not provide any examples, or specific information of any kind, to back up criticism of the film.

The article hints in rather foreboding fashion that the film is an effort to scare people about the threat posed by radical Islam: "Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying near the White House."

Even in this brief description of the film, The New York Times got it wrong. According to Clarion Films, which produced the documentary, the photograph of the White House with an Islamic flag on top was taken from Islamist sources, not altered by the filmmakers.

The Reutersnews service once again has made itself a laughingstock by publishing a mistake-riddled hit piece on Marco Rubio, all but ruling him out as a vice presidential nominee for the GOP because of alleged financial problems. Many of which turned out to be untrue.Five corrections were necessary.

Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller outlines a total of 7 falsehoods or exaggerations in the story. Dylan Byers of Politico spoke to Reuters staff who refused to go on the record (an interesting stance for a newsman), and writes:

One senior staffer at Reuters described the episode to me as a "fiasco," another as a "disgrace."

It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric Walsh, but have not heard back.)

They won't even defend themselves! How bad must it be if you can't even fabricate a rationalization of the facts. The facts must themselves be damning. John Hinderake of Powerline calls itthe "worst news story of 2012."

There are two hypotheses for what happened at Reuters:

1. An incompetent reporter did a half-assed job of research, and his editors (who either assigned or approved the story to the reporter in the first place) didn't bother with fact-checking. Or

2. They were fed flawed oppo research. Which raises the obvious question of who would want to knock Rubio out of consideration.

Our policy is to send news to our customers only after scrutiny by a group of production editors who ensure quality standards are maintained across all our news services.

These same purported quality standards were in place in 2006, when Reuters was busted for distributing an obviously photoshopped photograph exaggerating the destruction in an Israel air raid on Beirut. The very same photo that was the basis for the photoshopping had already been distributed by Reuters! This was quickly demonstrated in the blogosphere, as were anomalies that showed the photoshopping wasn't even very skilful.

When sufficiently embarrassed, the agency withdrew the photo, but retained the services of the Arab photographer who had supplied the crude forgery. But critics quickly noted many other questionable photos in his work already distributed by Reuters, and then the agency finally, after being humiliated worldwide overdistributing phony Hezb'allah propaganda over an extended period, withdrew all the work of Adnan Hajj.

The agency has long slanted its Middle East reporting, and allegations of indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Beirut (from which missiles were being launched against Israel) werethe cardinal propaganda theme of Hezb'allah. Israel made every effort to pinpoint its attacks on buildings from which missiles had been launched, and in order to reinforce its talking point, Hez made sure to launch missiles from crowded residential areas. So the difference between a picture showing one building with smoke billowing out, and showing a bunch of smoke form a bunch of buildings was pretty fundamental in terms of the framing of the story.

In other words, the photo editors who supposedly enforce Reuters' quality standards were doing no such thing. They approved (if they even looked at) a crude and obvious forgery that served the propaganda aims of Hezb'allah. As I wrote at the time, "There can be no denying by Reuters that its organization is deeply flawed in terms of its ability to enforce elementary quality standards. And any client of Reuters which continues to accept photographic material from it is on notice that the organization is unable to stand behind the integrity of its photojournalism, and that it does not plan to do anything about the organizational failure to which it has admitted."

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week.

But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.

This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.

At a minimum, it would appear that Reuters has not improved its quality standards in the years since then. So incompetence cannot be ruled out. Nor can a willingness to serve as a propaganda vehicle for one side in a political dispute. Which raises the second hypothesis:

2. They were fed oppo research

One of many dirty little secrets of modern journalism is that reporters often function as transcribers of information - press releases of one sort or another, in other words -- supplied to them by interested parties. It may be as politically innocent as a plug for a new product, but when politics is at work, opposition research is often supplied to reporters. Nearly always, this involves hits on Republicans.

There is a certain resemblance of this process to the way a lot of legislation is based on material written by lobbyists. In both cases, a lot of time and effort is saved on the part of the person being paid to do the job, and in both cases, important mutually beneficial relationships are sustained. Everybody wins! (Except the public.)

If they were fed opposition research, from whom did it come? Rubio's electoral appeal is considerable, and adding him to the ticket could influence many voters, not just Hispanics, to look upon the GOP ticket as attractive. In other words, applying the test of Cui bono, David Axelrod's re-election shop in Chicago would be the likeliest source. Does anyone imagine that Axelrod would be above such a move? More troubling is the question of whether their quality standards are as low as Reuters. If the Obama campaign is behind this, then we know that David Axelrod is slipping and the re-election effort is in trouble.

If hypothesis one is true, and they came up with the idea themselves, then self-interest would dictate a review of the reporter's work and that of the editors who allegedly enforced quality standards, followed by a notice to customers of the steps which have been taken to assure no further errors. This is what manufacturers usually do when they discover a defective product has been shipped. Otherwise, customers doubt the reliability of the products, and find other sources of supply.

That would seem to argue for hypothesis two. Sometimes silence is eloquent.

On the other hand, we are dealing with a bunch of people stupid enough to release a still from the most popular movie of our era and claim it as a news photo.

Either way, Paul Julius Reuter, the German rabbi's son who founded the Reuters News Agency a century and a half ago, still is spinning in his grave.

The NYPD once again finds itself in the crosshairs of the New York Times. On Tuesday, theTimes resurrected a year-old story from the Village Voice about the showing of my documentary film The Third Jihad to officers participating in an NYPD training program. What was the new smoking gun that warranted a trifecta of an above-the-foldreport from Michael Powellon January 24, an editorial (describing it as a "hate-filled film") on January 25, and yet another report in theTimes on January 25 - all amplified across the mainstream media by an AP rehash?

The Times was apparently impressed by new and supposedly devastating information that it was over 1,500 police officers who viewed the movie. Never mind that there are almost 35,000 officers on the force.

Powell's report on Tuesday was shoddy and biased, and ignored central facts presented by the movie. There was no analysis of the film's ideas or the content that the officers actually viewed. The article instead simply channeled the scattered ramblings of the victimology of the opponents of the movie. Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism noted last year that "the Council on American-Islamic Relations' protest that the documentary The Third Jihad smears Muslims reveals more about CAIR's desire to hide its record than any concern for the civil rights of Muslim Americans."Now, again, in following CAIR, the Times reveals its own exploitation of American Muslims in order to score political points.

Powell's premise is that the film is discriminatory against American Muslims because it presents all Muslims as radicalized. Yet if Powell, a journalist, believed the film to be an affront to Muslims, wouldn't he have felt a duty to speak with the devout Muslim who narrated the movie, to see why he was involved in its making? Powell made no attempt to discuss the film with me, or indeed with any other Muslims who sympathize with the film's view. (The AP, on the other hand, did contact me and placed a one-sentence response from me in its otherwise sympathetic rehash of the Times piece.) I'm an observant American Muslim, one who has chosen to take on a "jihad against jihad" as an act of love for my faith, in order to help protect our children from the inherent separatism of political Islam. Times readers would have been well served by being given my perspective.

In 2007, the NYPD released a landmark report titled " Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat," a seminal piece of research on how radicalization occurs. I embraced it as a blueprint that could help American Muslims confront the threat to our religion and to our country. Groups like CAIR, on the other hand, saw it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between American Muslims and law enforcement. The attacks by the Times upon the NYPD have everything to do with the efforts of CAIR to use American Muslims as a tool to suppress dissent and frame our communities as victims of American society.

TheThird Jihad is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. If it were, I would not have been a part of it. To this day, when it comes to Muslim diversity and the battle of ideas within Islam, it remains utterly bewildering why a major newspaper like the Times ignores anti-Islamist Muslim reformers. They essentially have no use in their political agenda for devout Muslims who maintain the courage to publicly take on the dominant American Islamist establishment from within.

The New York Times Company reported its Q4 earnings today, and they lost $39.7 million in 2011, or 27 cents a share, after making $107.7 million in 2010.

Q4 profit is down 12.2% y/y thanks to the continuing decline of print advertising and a 67.4% decline in the About Group's operating profit, which also saw a 25.7% decrease in quarterly ad revenues y/y.

The NYT also missed analysts' estimates — quarterly net income of 39 cents a share was lower than expectations of 42 cents a share. The fourth quarter income also reflects a $4.5 million payout to departed CEO Janet Robinson, and $7.9 million in severance costs, up from $4.7 in Q4 2010.

There is some good news, though: despite a 7.8% decline in print advertising revenues, digital advertising revenues for the News Media Group increased 5.3%. Digital ad revenues were 26.7% of ad revenues in Q4 2011 compared to 26.1% in Q4 2010.

The company can also look for to a net after-tax proceeds of $150 million in Q1 2012 from the sale of its Regional Media Group.